Adam Lanza's Father Speaks Out

The New Yorker has an in-depth interview with Peter Lanza, the father of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza. It's remarkably candid.

Lanza, who hadn't seen Adam in two years because Adam refused to see him, says Adam was pure evil and he wishes he had never been born. He says he has no doubt that had Adam had the chance, he would have killed him too.

“It was crystal clear something was wrong,” Peter said. “The social awkwardness, the uncomfortable anxiety, unable to sleep, stress, unable to concentrate, having a hard time learning, the awkward walk, reduced eye contact. You could see the changes occurring.”

[More...]

The Lanzas took Adam to a variety of doctors and psychiatrists. None saw a propensity for violence. Lanza says Asperger's is not to blame.

Peter gets annoyed when people speculate that Asperger’s was the cause of Adam’s rampage. “Asperger’s makes people unusual, but it doesn’t make people like this,” he said, and expressed the view that the condition “veiled a contaminant” that was not Asperger’s: “I was thinking it could mask schizophrenia.”

On wishing Adam had never been born:

Peter declared that he wished Adam had never been born, that there could be no remembering who he was outside of who he became. “That didn’t come right away. That’s not a natural thing, when you’re thinking about your kid. But, God, there’s no question. There can only be one conclusion, when you finally get there. That’s fairly recent, too, but that’s totally where I am.”

nor do I see a good reason anyone should be persuaded by the fathers claimed intent.

Adam Lanza needed more supervision than one person could provide.

I was aware his doctors "say" they saw nothing to indicate he would be violent, but clearly they were completely wrong. My question is do they stay away from applying a "might be violent" tag with more bias than is prudent.

I guess my favorite part of all of this is the example you provide of someone with such an overt disinterest in expanding his knowledge base beyond that which supports his preconceived notions and opinions, combined with an almost automatic rejection of anything that threatens to challenge or debunk those notions, but who still thinks he is qualified to sit in judgment of others.

I guess that works on some people, but I don't think you're going to make much headway here.

"Assault weapon" is a different term than assault rifle, as defined for military purposes. That being said, there are many terms with definitions that vary somewhat based on context. ... and this is not a military context.

has the capacity for violence, but I figured he'd suggest we should all be under lock and key, you know - just in case - and then I had no answer for the question of who locks up the last person standing - or is that person in charge? What if he or she gets violent?

if I could bring myself to read the full interview I'd have an answer; it's just that when I saw in the excerpt that Adam hadn't wanted to see his father for the two years prior, it made we wonder if Peter wasn't giving off a vibe that he wished Adam had never been born.

impression was that Peter Lanza's feeling that Adam should never have been born came after the shootings. Adam's isolating behaviors, refusing to see his father, seemed to have more to do with Peter not being as easy for Adam to manipulate as Nancy was.

I wondered how Peter would feel if he could see his son again. "Quite honestly, I think that I wouldn't recognize the person I saw," he said. "All I could picture is there'd be nothing there, there'd be nothing. Almost, like, `Who are you, stranger?' " Peter declared that he wished Adam had never been born, that there could be no remembering who he was outside of who he became. "That didn't come right away. That's not a natural thing, when you're thinking about your kid. But, God, there's no question. There can only be one conclusion, when you finally get there. That's fairly recent, too, but that's totally where I am."

... about his late son were formulated ex post facto, and not while his son was growing up. He's simply struggling to reconcile his longstanding parental feelings for Adam in the face of the horrific act his son committed.

And I'm sure that, like most parents who've had to confront the harsh reality of their child's bad acts, he probably also holds himself to account for what happened and second-guesses his own actions, constantly asking himself what he might have otherwise done to somehow preclude the disaster. And quite frankly, I really don't blame him for feeling that way.

what I got from the article too. His father wished that he had never been born because of the shooting. Prior to that it was mostly extreme frustratin with Adam because no matter what they did, nothing seemed to help.

all the way around. I've only been able to read the first page -- partly because it's hard to read, but also because this article is a "sit down and really read it" article. It doesn't lend itself to being read in fits and starts.

That's the "money quote" though, isn't it? That the father wishes the son had never been born? He's going to get some ugly push back no matter how he meant it.

and the part about wishing Adam had never been born came at the very end of the interview - and after reading all that he had tried to do over the years, it was clear to me that his wish was simply the end result of going through all the "what-ifs" and having to go all the way back to Adam never being born before he found the one thing that would have prevented this tragedy.

Which is really just the saddest thing.

This isn't one of those interviews I can say I was glad I read; I feel like maybe I know a little more, but the sadness is going to stay with me for a while.

article but what I got from it was not that Adam didn't want to see his father so much as Nancy didn't want Peter to see him. She would email him saying Adam has had a bad day or it's not a good time to come etc.

its what we still don't know about Adam Lanza that is key to his actions. Do psychiatrists operate on the principle that 100 dangerous people should go free rather than lock up one person who might not kill anybody?

I don't buy that "not being wanted" absolves the father from doing what he should do with a son.

My take is that the father wants to lose the tag, "Adam Lanza's your son".

I ask that because when all I had to go on were the excerpts Jeralyn posted, I had a very different impression than I got after I read the entire interview.

I really didn't want to read it, because I knew it was going to bother me on a number of levels. For one, I don't enjoy other people's pain, and there's no question that Peter Lanza has experienced more than most people will ever have to. Sure, you can second-guess and beat up on him and question his parenting skills, but you probably won't do any more or any less of it than he's done - and is still doing - every day, and starting long before the shootings themselves.

If you won't read the interview, the least you could do is stop talking out of your a$$; Peter Lanza doesn't need your absolution, or your forgiveness - that will come from within himself, if indeed it ever comes at all.

states that Adam Lanza had been diagnosed as violent by his psychiatrists. I'm sure that the Connecticut State Police would like to have that information so that they can correct their investigation records.

The investigation does not conclude what, if any, role mental health played in the shooter's motivation, but explicitly states that the "mental health professionals who saw him did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior."

Yet, the assertion "that psychiatrists operate on the principle that 100 dangerous people should go free rather than lock up one person who might not kill anybody" is just the type of rhetoric that is used by Republicans to promote locking up all mentally ill people rather than treating them.

The only reason Peter was talking to anyone, including me, was to share information that might help the families or prevent another such event. "I need to get some good from this. And there's no place else to find any good. If I could generate something to help them, it doesn't replace, it doesn't--" He struggled to find the words. "But I would trade places with them in a heartbeat if that could help."

Peter told me, "I get very defensive with my name. I do not like to even say it. I thought about changing it, but I feel like that would be distancing myself and I cannot distance myself. I don't let it define me, but I felt like changing the name is sort of pretending it didn't happen and that's not right." But Peter has found the visibility hard. Old friends have been unflagging in their support, but Peter said he thought that he might never make new friends again. "This defines who I am and I can't stand that, but you have to accept it."

Speaking to the New Yorker is part of not distancing himself, the exact opposite of what Mikado Cat has posited.

Why do we bother? There has been months and months of this kind of fact-free speculation and refusal to do any "homework," usually on the basis that he "knows all he needs to" on any given topic; I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

There was nothing in it about the arsenal Nancy kept in the house. Did Peter and the psychiatrists know anything about it? What about the advisability of training a person with no empathy for other humans to be comfortable firing guns, even if that person, on the surface, seemed to be non violent? I didn't think the New Yorker is a publication that tries to be 2nd Amendment correct.

Everyone tried to encourage Adam and looked for ways to engage with him. Nancy would take him on trips to the shooting range. Nancy and Peter thought that their son was nonviolent; the best way to build a connection to someone with Asperger's is often to participate in his fascinations.

The general meme seems to be, "No one could have seen this coming. There isn't any way we could have predicted this."

The question to ask is, "Is there any way we could have predicted/prevented this?"

To be able to even ask this question I believe we would have to refuse to assign blame. I think the overwhelming fear that someone might have done something to precipitate Lanza's rampage (or neglected to do something that might have prevented it) is enough to avoid the question altogether, to our great detriment.

involved here? How do you live alone in the same house with a deeply troubled loved one who was only physically an adult and only communicate via e-mail? Meanwhile Adam is sequestered away in his room apparently utterly obsessed with murder and mayhem and no one has the slightest clue.

since I used to teach the disabled, including children with autism.
You could never tell what would set them off. As you said, MOBlue, it could be something such as (what we would consider) a minor sensory experience. Touch, sounds, sights, even a taste of something.
And I didn't have to live with it 24-7, just a few hours daily, five days a week, nine months a year.
The parents were desperate. I spoke to many of them, at length.
Most of them would have been pleased to even get emails from their kids (not that emailing was available, way back in the day when I taught, so let's say written or typed letters).
I had a student who would only communicate by writing on a chalkboard. We advised his mother to buy a chalkboard at home, which she did, and at least her son would write a few things down on it.
Another student would only communicate by typing on a typewriter. I suppose, nowadays, he might well use email.
Even today, so much is not known about those on the autism spectrum. And, if I were the parent of such a kid, and the main thing that gave that kid comfort, and a sense of connection with me, was taking him out to shoot, then that's what I would do.
Of course, knowing what I know, I would also try to secure those guns in my house. (Which we have always done anyway, with our guns. A gun safe, and the bullets and shells kept elsewhere in another locked location.)
But hindsight is a wonderful thing. What if your child has a fascination with knives, and loves to cook and slice meats and chop vegetables, and this is the main way he connects with you? Then what if that kid takes a couple of knives and goes out and starts carving people up? What if he likes fire, and grilling food outdoors, and then takes a match or lighter and sets fire to a building with a whole lot of people?
Oh, I don't know, and I would probably have secured the guns as well as a I could. But locking up my knives, or matches and lighters and lighter fluid?

I've worked with the mentally ill and drug addicts, you don't wanna go there, believe me.
I will say though that in decades I never once heard an educated, qualified professional recommend as a therapuetic intervention buying assault weapons for troubled young men to learn to shoot.

from isolation in his room to assault weapons. Also, the length of time since those children were shot has nothing to do whether or not his mother was neglectful. Assault weapons were not part of your original comment. Your comment had to do with his mother's "benign neglect" in allowing Adam to isolate in his room.

Allowing Adam access to assault weapons and allowing him to isolate himself are two very distinct subjects. "Benign neglect" is not how I would describe either activity.

Had you written that his mother should have never allowed Adam access to weapons of any type, I would have totally agreed with you. But you did not express that opinion in your comment. I can only respond to what you actually write.

with the isolation bit. There isn't a qualified professional in the history of autism research that would recommend that as an effective home treatment approach. I mean, what was that, the Amish-shunning method of dealing with Adam's condition?

I brought up Nancy's Bushmaster therapy approach mainly because you seem to know so much about the pluses and minuses of the introducing of "minor stimulation" into the environment of someone like Adam -- not to introduce a "separate issue" into the discussion.

Adam by isolating him, rather that he was isolating himself, and she was trying to reach him. Which led to her attempting to draw him out by indulging him in his fascination with guns.

Does that make sense to me? No...and yes. I've never had a child with the kinds of problems and behaviors Adam had, nor have I ever had a child who was so difficult to connect with. I don't know whether, if I were Nancy Lanza, I'd be so desperate for that connection, in the belief that connecting would somehow solve some of these problems, that I'd resort to what she resorted to.

I think it's possible to be so deeply into a situation that one's perception of what makes sense and what doesn't is completely distorted; I'm sure Peter Lanza must wonder whether, if he'd been more persistent in trying to maintain contact with Adam, he'd have seen how badly Nancy needed help, both for Adam and for herself.

These kinds of conditions, whether it was just Asperger's or Asperger's and another complicated component like schizophrenia, really become family illnesses - it isn't just the person with the condition who is affected, it's everyone who lives with and deals with that person. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to maintain anything resembling a healthily-functioning family unit under the conditions that existed with Adam.

I think before any of us declare how we would have handled things differently, or decide who is and isn't at fault, we stop and consider that we are - thank God - just spectators to someone else's tragedy, and we really don't know who we would be or how we would be reacting if this was happening to us.

Touch can be painful and uncomfortable; people may not like to be touched and this can affect their relationships with others.

Dislikes having anything on hands or feet.

Difficulties brushing and washing hair because head is sensitive.

Only likes certain types of clothing or textures.

A piece of dirt on someone's hand with a serious sensory issue can create a complete, long lasting melt down.

I could continue to provide information on this subject but it would not make any difference.

You have made up you mind that Adam's mother neglected him and chose to isolate him. When someone is as heavily invested in being right about something as you are with this, nothing I or any one else could write would change your mind. I will not make any other attempt.

own it, Mo. Personally I haven't seen you have so much understanding for the questionable actions of someone at since the last time someone dared to criticize Madeleine Albright here.

Of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong in everything I've said on this thread, but I do think at some point people gave up on this kid and let him retreat to his lair and morph into Kafka's cockroach -- with a veritable arsenal of ammo and guns in the house yet..

you've stated that "fact" once already. I think spoiling for a fight to no apparent purpose might qualify as trolling in some people's eyes. Maybe another one of Hillary's avenging angels will swing by and help you out -- ordinarily that's what happens on these situations..

chose to isolate him in his room as a method to shun him, please provide a link to substantiate your claim. If not, you are making unfounded accusations that contradicts statements made by people who knew the family and from his father in this interview.

From everything I've read, Adam was the one who chose the isolate and not something that was forced on him.

"Adam was not open to therapy," Peter told me. "He did not want to talk about problems and didn't even admit he had Asperger's." Peter and Nancy were confident enough in the Asperger's diagnosis that they didn't look for other explanations for Adam's behavior. In that sense, Asperger's may have distracted them from whatever else was amiss. "If he had been a totally normal adolescent and he was well adjusted and then all of a sudden went into isolation, alarms would go off," Peter told me. "But let's keep in mind that you expect Adam to be weird." Still, Peter and Nancy sought professional support repeatedly, and none of the doctors they saw detected troubling violence in Adam's disposition. According to the state's attorney's report, "Those mental health professionals who saw him did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior." Peter said, "Here we are near New York, one of the best locations for mental-health care, and nobody saw this."

Peter gets annoyed when people speculate that Asperger's was the cause of Adam's rampage. "Asperger's makes people unusual, but it doesn't make people like this," he said, and expressed the view that the condition "veiled a contaminant" that was not Asperger's: "I was thinking it could mask schizophrenia." Violence by autistic people is more commonly reactive than planned--triggered, for example, by an invasion of personal space. Studies of people with autism who have committed crimes suggest that at least half also suffer from an additional condition--from psychosis, in about twenty-five per cent of cases. Some researchers believe that a marked increase in the intensity of an autistic person's preoccupations can be a warning sign, especially if those preoccupations have a sinister aspect. Forensic records of Adam's online activity show that, in his late teens, he developed a preoccupation with mass murder. But there was never a warning sign; his obsession was discussed only pseudonymously with others online.

Both autism and psychopathy entail a lack of empathy. Psychologists, though, distinguish between the "cognitive empathy" deficits of autism (difficulty understanding what emotions are, trouble interpreting other people's nonverbal signs) and the "emotional empathy" deficits of psychopathy (lack of concern about hurting other people, an inability to share their feelings). The subgroup of people with neither kind of empathy appears to be small, but such people may act out their malice in ways that can feel both guileless and brutal.

Autism is increasingly invoked in courtrooms as an argument for leniency, sometimes on the ground that the autistic person is confused about cause and effect--a befuddlement defense, as it were. Adam Lanza, however, clearly understood what he was doing. He destroyed one of his hard drives, and left behind an electronic spreadsheet on mass murder, and photographs of himself with a gun to his head. A recent study suggests that a lack of empathy may be connected to insensitivity to physical pain. Despite Adam's hypersensitivity to more minor irritants, this seems to have been one of his symptoms; his mother warned the school that he might not stop doing something because it hurt.

"If he had been a totally normal adolescent and he was well adjusted and then all of a sudden went into isolation, alarms would go off," Peter told me. "But let's keep in mind that you expect Adam to be weird."

Adam isolating himself did not raise alarm bells because it was more or less expected behavior.

My daughter works with prekindergarten special needs children. She has worked with children who have Asperger's and who are autistic. She loves her work and often shares some of her experiences with me. She has detailed how difficult it is to communicate with these children and some of the creative methods that they use.

She told me the story of one little boy who completely tuned everyone out who attempted to communicate with him using the spoken word. OTOH, if people sang the words to him he would normally follow the instructions sung to him and at times would sing words back. The tale was told not from the standpoint of this being abnormal behavior from someone with his particular disease but from the prospective that they were thrilled that they found some method that allowed them to communicate him.

you just have attempt to interrupt someone when they're doing something that's just worsening their condition..And hopefully you're interrupting them with something other than e-mails and shooting exploding targets with Bushmasters.

Geneticists are starting to pinpoint the DNA anomalies found in kids like Matt who are savants from birth. Still, a single savant gene will probably never be found. More than a dozen genes may contribute to autism. Several other forms of mental impairment also produce islands of startling ability - known as splinter skills - as if fragments of savant code are scattered throughout the genetic database.

Last year, researchers at Vanderbilt University discovered a cluster of abnormalities on chromosome 15 in the families of autistic savants. Another set of irregularities on the same chromosome produces learning-disabled kids who can solve jigsaw puzzles twice as fast as other children and have an insatiable desire to overeat - Prader-Willi syndrome. A third chromosomal disorder, called Williams syndrome, results in mental retardation, poor coordination, and a different set of splinter skills. Williams kids, who have distinctively elfin facial features, are naturally outgoing, love to schmooze, and have a propensity for florid verbal constructions (hyperlexia), similar to Matt's discourse on proportions.

Like savants, people with Williams syndrome have an unusual relationship with the audible world. Some are terrified as children by the hum of household appliances, but others become connoisseurs of the rich drones of machines, like a boy described in the clinical literature who had a collection of 18 different vacuum cleaners. Many people with Williams also excel at picking out the notes in a chord. Some are so sensitive that they can identify the make and model of a car from the sound of its engine.

In tests conducted at a music camp in Massachusetts, psychologists found that the errors made by Williams kids were more musical than those made by a control group. On a clapping test, those in the control group sometimes just dropped the beat, but the Williams kids made mistakes that elaborated on the rhythms. They were jamming.

In the same way that Matt's mind is made of math problems, the minds of Williams syndrome kids are made of sound. As one girl told a researcher, "Music is my favorite way of thinking."